


Healing

by Hope



Category: Firefly, Lord of the Rings (Novel), Serenity (2005)
Genre: Crossover, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-09-18
Updated: 2005-09-18
Packaged: 2017-10-03 10:41:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,114
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17143
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hope/pseuds/Hope
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Simon and River in the houses of healing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Healing

"This is insane," Simon says, his tone half-disbelief and half-resignation. "River, get down from there, please. How they deal with illness on an ordinary day, I don't know."

River clambers down from a broad, stone window sill and turns around in time to see Simon drag a forearm across his brow, hands messy with blood and usually-crisp shirt somewhat limp where it's rolled up to above his elbows.

"Have to," she says, kneeling beside one of the pallets, looking across the gasping figure to a woman sitting opposite, bent head shrouded in a shawl. "So many," she says, her fascinated gaze dropping to where red soaks through the off-white swaddling the man's chest. "Still out there. All scattered, like seeds. Waiting to grow."

Simon sighs and crouches beside her, pressing a damp cloth into her hand. "I know," he says softly, maybe so only she can hear; maybe because it's soft and quiet in here already, gentle breaths exhaling, air bleeding out and sound diffusing. River presses the cloth against the man's cheek; clearing a pallid smear that starts below his eye and ends at his clotted beard. "I know it was a battle. I just…" It had been so dark, and Mal's eyes black and brow heavy, and the city dirty white, and now the sun shines through the arched openings at the front of the gardens. Simon's chewing his lip, and staring into the space approximately one foot above the patient's chest.

River's throat catches. "Maybe you ought to sleep," she says, and his gaze snaps onto her, alert and awake. She struggles to hold onto her momentum, motivation, equilibrium. At length he nods, and she's grateful.

*

She doesn't like to watch while he sleeps. There's a man in the Houses whose skin burns, who sweat rolls off his skin like tears, whose face softens as he dreams and tears at a place far back in River's belly. She can't bear to watch him but she can't look away, he's like a candle flame burning fiercely, harsh white against her retina and mesmerizing. His hand is hot in hers and her skin cleaves to the heat as her tongue cleaves to the roof of her mouth, holding back a wail as the dreams peel off him to dive back like solar flares.

Another man comes and takes his other hand, a man with stars on his brow and a kind of hopeful sadness in his eyes. River tells him, "_Fire,_" and the man smiles at her and breathes the flower-water and calls the man's name, _Faramir_, and the cool eyes open.

There's a sharp breath behind her then, and she looks up and Simon's eyes are young and astonished, as if he's shed years of life in his sleep, and has to rapidly grow to catch up from his sudden waking. "How did you…" he says, intrigued and inarticulate, and River tries to explain.

"There was a waterfall," she says, "and a dream; wading out into the water, the fire kindled." She can feel it, the lick of flames on the inside of her skin, the unbearable heat. She shivers. "Had to put it out."

The other man smiles at her, and uses a cloth dipped in the flower-water to dab at the sick man's brow. "Are you a healer?" he asks Simon at length, and his voice is soft but strong, his gaze steady as he glances up at Simon.

"Yes," Simon's mouth is open like he wants to say something else. "We're not…" he glances down at River, licks his lips, and the silence drags. "…From here, we just need to--"

"You're welcome here," the man's gaze doesn't waver. "As is any aid you can offer. I thank you for it," Simon returns the man's slow nod with only a slight hesitation. "There are many who are needing it," and he's turned away to look around at the pallets lining the walls, at the dark figures flitting between them. "The battle is not yet over for these men."

*

Mal comes in later that day, and Simon only chides him a little for not coming in earlier as he carefully tears away the ruined arm of Mal's shirt before carefully binding the long gash with a clean bandage; Mal's mouth is still tight-set and eyes dark and distant. Simon doesn't ask when they're leaving again, though River knows he wants to, and she keeps out of the Captain's way when he strides out of the crowded Houses again, not looking back as he steps back into the shadow deeper in the city.

Simon's very busy, and a woman who tells River her name is Ioreth takes it upon herself to keep River underfoot, like a chick needing to be sheltered under her feathered skirts. She tells River about the man with the stars and the sad, hopeful eyes; she calls him _King_ though River knows that's not his only name, and his stars are many, like his symbols, which are heavy over his shoulders but like a mantle too, keeping him warm and clearing a path behind him for those to follow. She tells Ioreth and the woman looks at her strangely, then bids her to help heat the vats of water over the fires, and shows her a flower she calls _kingsfoil_. The scent of it is sweet in River's nose, cool and gentle in her head, quieting the noises and relaxing her limbs, if only for a moment.

*

There's another woman in the Houses, fair and pale, sleeping, not like the dark-haired women who work at soothing the others. She has a brother, and his pain burns pale like her skin in his heart, and River can't speak, can't even come close to where Simon and the brother stand over her because their mirroring fires will burn her up. _I thought I'd lost her_, says the brother, maybe not aloud, but then maybe so, because Simon looks up at him and then down to where the man's thumb is stroking his sister's hand, slowly, reverently, as if he could press too hard and she would shatter.

Later, when the man calls her name, like a boat's prow cleaving through his tears, Simon stands shakily and comes to find her. She's crouched in a corner, cool stone against her back and thigh muscles taut and trembling, and the _kingsfoil_ invades her senses, comes off Simon's skin and his damp hair, and Simon is his symbol, warm and worried and shaking a little beneath her desperate grip. "How long," she whispers, and her eyes and throat burn, she's so tired and so tired of burning and drowning. "Have I been dreaming?"

**Author's Note:**

> http://hopeful-fiction.livejournal.com/34336.html


End file.
